Republican Officials Must Be Held Accountable For Voter Intimidation Against Black Americans And Other Minorities

By& Sonali Kolhatkar A Florida resident named Isaac Menasche received a home visit this September from a police officer asking whether he’d signed a petition for a ballot measure. The petition, which Menasche had indeed signed, was for a November initiative overturning a strict abortion ban that Florida Governor Ron& DeSantis signed& last year. Now the governor is attempting to discredit those signatures using state-funded cops. According to the& Tampa Bay Times, state law enforcement officers have visited the homes of other signers as well. DeSantis created an elections police unit in 2022 to investigate so-called& election crimes. By that August, he’d& arrested 20 “elections criminals”& for allegedly voting improperly in the 2020 election. A majority of those arrested — some at& gunpoint& — were Black. Most had been formerly incarcerated and& thought they were eligible to vote, since Floridians had overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure restoring their voting rights. But DeSantis and his GOP allies in the state legislature& used every maneuver& they could to thwart that popular decision. If anyone is breaking voting laws intentionally in Florida and elsewhere, it’s& white conservatives& who’ve been caught engaging in deliberate voter fraud numerous times, including attempting to vote multiple times...